The Why's And How's of Detangling.

Lol! Okay of course this meme is just an exaggeration of what naturals have to do when it comes to caring for their hair but truly detangling is such an integral part of our hair care routine.

Last weekend a customer came through and wanted wash her hair, get a treatment and get some crochet braids in. No problems I said. When it was her turn, I uncovered her hair and got my trusted detangling conditioner (African Naturalistas Moisturizing and detangling conditioner - if you haven't tried this, mehn, you are missing out on some good stuff!!) and put it through her hair, then proceeded to do what I assumed would be a basic detangling session. After about 3 minutes, I had to ask her why her hair was so tangled.

Apparently she had just taken off small braids and without combing or detangling or doing anything, she had shampooed her hair!!!! My brain just started going OMG because I knew this was not going to be a basic detangling anything.

Detangling AND stretching your hair in the shower - How to cut your detangling time by half!

I've always been one to detangle/comb my hair only when wet or damp - either in the shower while rinsing out my deep conditioner or after rinsing and while applying leave in products. Normally this would mean that when I'm done I'd be left with a few shrunken braided sections of hair plus I'd spend a bit of time first detangling in the shower then applying products afterwards. I decided to try a a different route the last time I was detangling in the shower and I was very pleased with the results.

So in essence what I did was use the weight of the water from the shower as a detangling aid - each section I worked with, I would first finger detangle then use my wide toothed comb to comb through making sure that section was free of tangles. Now what I would usually do in the past is just braid the section loosely with my head away from the water but this time around I kept my head under the shower making sure the water was running down the section of hair. Since the weight of the water makes the hair 'hang' down  and loosens up the strands, I was able to very easily braid the hair in its hanging state.